Evidence of meeting #63 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was audit.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Mona Fortier Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hello. Thank you for being here today.
I read your report with interest. I was especially interested in the issue of workplace inspections. You said that more evaluations are done on paper.
My concern in this regard is that, in my riding of Ottawa—Vanier, there is a high percentage of seniors and individuals who require home care that should be supervised.
I question the importance of knowing the relationship between the employer and workers, specifically temporary foreign workers. Can you explain the importance of having more on-site inspections as opposed to inspections on paper?
4:30 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Mr. Chair, I'll start, and then I'll turn it over to Mr. Wheeler, if I can.
The important things in the inspections.... Yes, we identified that most of the inspections the department was doing were simply a matter of asking employers to send in documents, and they would review the documents. We felt that they needed to take a risk-based approach to inspection—identify which employers were most at risk of not complying with the program and put a focus on inspecting those employers.
We said that they should do more on-site inspections. The other thing they were doing, though, was that, even when there was an on-site inspection, they were giving the employer warning that they were going to come in. Again, surprise inspections can be more effective in some situations. We also said they didn't do very many actual interviews with the temporary foreign workers themselves.
I'll ask Mr. Wheeler if there is anything I have forgotten or anything that is specific to caregivers.
4:30 p.m.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Mr. Chair, I have one small point to add.
The department itself identified inspections of caregivers as crucial, because this was a higher-risk area. However, during the course of our audit, we did not find that any inspections were done of caregivers. Another area where there is a lot of risk is with agricultural workers, and only in July 2015 did they start doing inspections in that area.
Mr. Ferguson mentioned that even when they did the inspections, a lot of them were paper-based. There are 21 things they can look at when they do an inspection. However, under the old regime, they were looking only at three of those elements. Under the new regime, they are allowed to look at all 21, but we found that most of the inspections were looking only at seven. Even when they were doing the inspections, they might not always have been getting at the areas of greatest risk. As you mentioned, caregivers were a key area.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Mona Fortier Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
I understand that an effort has been made thus far. The minister has undertaken to increase the number of on-site inspections, so there will be a new approach.
Do you think that doing more on-site inspections could affect the program's future? If so, in what way?
4:30 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
We made a recommendation that the department develop and implement a comprehensive risk-based framework, which should include investigating specific sectors where high levels of risk may exist. We made a recommendation that they look at their inspection regime.
What I would suggest is that the department should be able to provide information, on a periodic basis, about what they have done: how many inspections there were, how many of them were on-site inspections, how many of those on-site inspections were on a surprise basis, how many of them included interviews with temporary foreign workers, and how many resulted in something that needed to be altered. What we have done here is provide the department with a way to get down to some specific indicators that would answer your question of whether what they are doing now is a better approach to inspections than what they were doing when we did the audit.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Mona Fortier Liberal Ottawa—Vanier, ON
Thank you.
I will give up my remaining speaking time for Mr. Cuzner, if possible. I have no more questions.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
First, thanks very much for reaffirming that the government missed no deadlines, that they have an action plan, and that they are working on the action plan. I appreciate that.
I want your opinion on sectoral changes. When the changes were made by Minister Kenney, everything was lumped together. All of a sudden, the television and movie industries were being hurt terribly in Canada. They couldn't get Leonardo DiCaprio across the border to film The Revenant, because he had to go through the same protocol as the fish plant worker in Souris, Prince Edward Island.
Do you see a need for a sectoral approach? The needs, the demands, the quality of the jobs, all those things factor into a good program. What are your thoughts on that?
4:35 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
If I can, Mr. Chair, I need to make sure I am understood when I am talking, first of all, about the deadlines. II did not mean to imply that the department has missed deadlines, nor did I mean to imply that they have met the deadlines.
4:35 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
What I meant to say was that they have deadlines. They have been given the deadlines and some of them have already gone by, so now there is information for somebody to look at to determine whether they have or have not met those deadlines.
4:35 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
We didn't look at sectoral changes specifically.
4:35 p.m.
Liberal
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Thank you.
I'm glad to be back on the committee. I was on the defence committee for a very short period of time. I enjoyed defence because I got to make a new friend, Yves Robillard. We had a very good time. It's a very good committee, non-partisan and working together. I hope we can achieve that here on this committee. I sense there are partisan jabs going on here.
The goal of the committee is to do good work, and the responsibility of a government is to make policy. The responsibility of the department is to carry out that policy. The responsibility of the audit today is to determine if the policy is being carried out and the department is doing what they are supposed to do.
The audit period covered from the beginning of January 2013 to August 31, 2016. Why did it not go to the end of 2016?
4:35 p.m.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
Our field work ended on August 31, 2016. At that point we started the draft report and discussed recommendations with the department. In any performance audit we have to have a cut-off period, at which point we stop doing the field work and start drafting the report. It was no more than that.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
What changes have there been in the last year of the audit?
4:35 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Are you referring to the August 2015 to August 2016 period?
4:35 p.m.
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
In the area of enforcement activities, we did see that they started to do more enforcement activities, the on-site inspections, for example. As we stated in the report, they started 173 of them, and at the end of our audit they had only completed 13. They were starting to go in the right direction and make some good first steps, but they hadn't fully implemented all those changes.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
You mentioned that the recommendations that were made are few but important. Did the government agree with all the recommendations?
4:35 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Yes, they agreed with all our recommendations.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Mark Warawa Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Would you agree that it may be helpful—as this audit was helpful—to have the department come to the HUMA committee and report to us whether or not they have achieved their action plan and those recommendations?
